The Options:
Suicide - My best shot at publication, a paper has been in peer review for TEN MONTHS, came back as a reject. They said my conclusions were too tentative, when in fact I was *obviously* trying for arrogant subtlety (the illiterate teabags!). Now I am angrily sending another paper to a different journal. This paper is damn fine and ought to be accepted with praise and adulation, but I have a feeling I’ve yet to rack up a sufficient number of rejection slips to get my first publication. Suicide may be the only way to ease the pain.
Murder - I asked a friend for a reference on rave culture that I had heard him talking about, and it turned out to be a reference to his own honours thesis. This the husky, hairy little man with the unbelievably hot girlfriend, who is also apparently a master on the wheels of steel. I think my self-esteem will improve significantly knowing that he is no longer out there, mocking me with his outrageous intelligence, sex appeal and DJ skillz. Murder is definitely the go.
Martinis - New Year’s party this year is going to be a Casino Royale theme. I was trying on my outfit this afternoon and I look so good, well, I’ll need a big stick to keep the girls away (and one rather randy boy, I might add). My character is a dissipated young man gambling away the last of his inheritance. In a cravat. The one thing I’m not looking forward to is playing poker against Tomas. He played his first game of Texas holdem the other night and he beat the hell out of us - his strategy was to take all of E and David’s chips while I was playing convervatively and then use them to bludgeon me to death when I got drunk and stupid. I’m going to have to stay off the martinis if I want to avoid going down in a screaming fireball under the onslaught of poker’s latest idiot savant. But if I do lose, it’s martinis all the way to oblivion.
Here’s my artistic anticipation of New Year’s fun. A tip of the hat to Lizzy:
9 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Sorry about the publication. An only slightly better scenario would be that at the onset of such an unbearable illiteracy rate in your domain of study, you impulsively throw it all away for a prolific career as international gambler, which serves, by the way, as the perfect disguise for your true profession & calling: a hitman. Or an insanely sexy artist with a particular flair for not wearing pants. Whichever.
Good luck on this paper though. You know, just in case the other things doesn’t work out.
Comment by V — Tuesday December 19 2006 @ 2:41 am
Woah, nice legs.
Comment by Clare — Tuesday December 19 2006 @ 8:09 am
Suicide may actually guarantee you publication, a la John Kennedy Toole, but the blogging world would be scarred and void of cartoons of Mark sitting on blue hoverdiscs so NO! I object most vehemently.
Comment by T. — Tuesday December 19 2006 @ 5:31 pm
V - My true profession and calling is being a hitman? I’m just imagining myself with a Chuck Bronson moustache… er, no, let’s not. But the ‘no pants artist’ thing might work. Thanks for the support anyhow.
T - it’s a stool, dammit :( Meanwhile, my writing is about as prestigious as the Black & Decker toaster manual. I don’t imagine they’d be itching to make a hardcover collection the moment I kick it.
Comment by Mark — Tuesday December 19 2006 @ 6:51 pm
Clare - Thankyou. Yes, they are that skinny in real life.
Comment by Mark — Tuesday December 19 2006 @ 6:52 pm
It totally looks like a hoverdisk to me too. ;)
I think for new year’s a bunch of us are going to end up playing board games and watching movies and drinking. So not as cool as Casion Royale I guess, unless you totally dig Scrabble.
Comment by winter — Wednesday December 20 2006 @ 5:49 am
Hell yeah, we dig Scrabble over here. Don’t play it nearly enough.
Comment by Mark — Wednesday December 20 2006 @ 9:26 pm
Oh my dear, i know the pain of paper rejection. Our review panel said they would only accept our group’s paper IF and only if ALL OF MY WORK WAS REMOVED FROM THE PAPER!!! It was like a kick in the guts, i tells ya.
Anyway, i’m sure they would have given you some pointers and you will be able to edit or submit to another journal. Fingers crossed ;)
Comment by side_kicker — Saturday December 23 2006 @ 11:33 am
Yeah, it’s not all bad. Shame about yours though… in the arts it’s all quite subjective and there’s a lot of room for disagreement, but you wouldn’t think that would happen in science.
Comment by Mark — Sunday December 24 2006 @ 2:19 pm